Netflix's New Drama Series, House Of Cards: Some Brief Remarks

We take a momentary break from our hiatus from blogging to note briefly Netflix's small revolution in the delivery of original TV-type series drama to audiences worldwide.

We've just finished viewing Friday's premiere of all 13 hour-long episodes of Season 1 of the new Netflix original drama series House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright, and Kate Mara, an American remake of the brilliant 1990 BBC series of the same name starring Ian Richardson, Diane Fletcher, and Susannah Harker, and it's a splendid effort both substantively and in its revolutionary method of delivery (all 13 episodes of Season 1 available at the same time on the Internet for instant streaming directly to your properly equipped viewing device of choice). The drama's production is visually gorgeous and the performances largely first-rate throughout. The writing, however, is only occasionally so, we're sorry to have to report, and is fairly uneven both within and across episodes (all told, there were some six writers involved) and around Episode 8 the drama begins going badly off the rails and thereafter quickly degenerates into a series drama of the typical American TV network sort for the most part. But even at the series's best, Kevin Spacey's bluntly brutal Francis (Frank) Underwood is no match in Machiavellian machination for Ian Richardson's deliciously wicked Francis Urquhart, and Robin Wright's barbed, athletically coarse Claire Underwood is no match in seductive Lady Macbeth-ness for Diane Fletcher's coolly smooth patrician Elizabeth Urquhart, nor is Kate Mara's Zoe Barnes a match for Susannah Harker's Mattie Storin in quietly inviting beauty. You may think we're being biased in our assessment by our often evident Anglophilia. You might very well think that. We couldn't possibly comment.

That is all. We now resume our interrupted hiatus.